Successive synthesis of well-defined star-branched polymers by an iterative approach based on living anionic polymerization

Abstract

To successively synthesize star-branched polymers, we developed a new iterative methodology which involves only two sets of the reactions in each iterative process: (a) an addition reaction of DPE or DPE-functionalized polymer to a living anionic polymer, and (b) anin-situ reaction of 1-(4-(4-bromobutyl)phenyl) -1-phenylethylene with the generated 1,1-diphenylalkyl anion to introduce one DPE functionality. With this methodology, 3-, 4-, and 5-arm, regular star-branched polystyrenes, as well as 3-arm ABC, 4-arm ABCD, and a new 5-arm ABCDE, asymmetric star-branched polymers, were successively synthesized. The A, B, C, D, and E arm segments were poly(4-trimethylsilylstyrene), poly(4-methoxystyrene), poly(4-methylstyrene), polystyrene, and poly(4-tert-butyldimethylsilyloxystyrene), respectively. All of the resulting star-branched polymers were well-defined in architecture and precisely controlled in chain length, as confirmed by SEC,1H NMR, VPO, and SLS analyses. Furthermore, we extended the iterative methodology by the use of a new functionalized DPE derivative, 1-(3-chloromethylphenyl)-1-((3-(1-phenylethenyl)phenyl)ethylene, capable of introducing two DPE functionalitiesvia one DPE anion reaction site in the reaction (b). The number of arm segments of the star-branched polymer synthesized by the methodology could be dramatically increased to 2, 6, and up to 14 by repeating the iterative process.